This is eyerolling, and not really relevant to people who don't have "followers" but also I don't agree that the pivot to the center is the right move and think the case of left wing values can be...
This is eyerolling, and not really relevant to people who don't have "followers" but also I don't agree that the pivot to the center is the right move and think the case of left wing values can be made better than they portray.
As they're a queer trans person, I hear their "don't be weird" in a much different tone than I do from a number of folks. But I think that unless their audience also leans that way they're missing the mark and potentially pandering to the transphobes with that line. Idk them, so I can't really say.
It just feels very unnecessary, and is just a post for other people who are also posting... Is that their audience? For a post about meeting your audience and persuading them, why make this public if it's for other substack authors? Maybe they're in a particularly unique space to reach folks due to their EA (more eyeroll) output. I doubt it though? They're a small blog.
Yeah. I think the advice is exactly the opposite of what is needed. A lot of people are swayed by popular opinion. If everyone is talking about how trump and republicans are evil dumbasses who...
Yeah. I think the advice is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
A lot of people are swayed by popular opinion. If everyone is talking about how trump and republicans are evil dumbasses who start wars and ruin the economy, then low info voters will hear that and be swayed about it.
Haven't we been hearing for years how successful all the negative ads and demonizing of democrats has been for republicans? Why wouldn't the same voters respond the same way to demonizing of republicans.
I mean unless you have "followers" rather than friends, i don't think it's ultimately relevant. It's not advice for you or me (unless you do have followers, I suppose, idk you) it's advice for...
I mean unless you have "followers" rather than friends, i don't think it's ultimately relevant. It's not advice for you or me (unless you do have followers, I suppose, idk you) it's advice for someone "building an audience" on substack
I suspect a lot of people on this site are going to be very offended by this post. I don’t entirely blame them. They are broadly correct, but I do think it’s a bit ironic that this post about how...
I suspect a lot of people on this site are going to be very offended by this post. I don’t entirely blame them.
They are broadly correct, but I do think it’s a bit ironic that this post about how to talk to the right wing is like a case study on how not to talk to the left though.
Though I agree with the general sentiment that the culture war is a distraction, asking LGBT folks to give up their identity to vote for the political party that never does anything meaningful is...
For the love of God, please save being weird and offputting about the culture war until December. There will be plenty of time for trans people to freak the mundanes when we don’t have an aspiring dictator in the White House. For now, make like the 2010s gay rights movement: if you’re going to talk about trans rights, be wholesome and sympathetic.
Though I agree with the general sentiment that the culture war is a distraction, asking LGBT folks to give up their identity to vote for the political party that never does anything meaningful is such a good portrait of the average democrat.
Is your Internet profile really your identity? Do you lose your identity if you choose to keep some things off the Internet? Most people here post under pseudonyms, which could be thought of as...
Is your Internet profile really your identity? Do you lose your identity if you choose to keep some things off the Internet?
Most people here post under pseudonyms, which could be thought of as "losing your identity" if you wanted to feel bad about it, but there are good reasons for it, too.
Not who you replied to but yeah, who I am on the internet is actually who I am. I mask for every real life setting and I can just be my authentic self here. I know I’m not the only one, and a...
Not who you replied to but yeah, who I am on the internet is actually who I am. I mask for every real life setting and I can just be my authentic self here.
I know I’m not the only one, and a trans blogger telling everyone to tone themselves down for the sake of the centrist voters who might vote to kill us all if we’re too weird is….. a hot take.
I'd agree that online is probably the place I am the most consistently fully authentic outside of my home. And that has a lot to do with friend groups being further away than I would like but it's...
I'd agree that online is probably the place I am the most consistently fully authentic outside of my home. And that has a lot to do with friend groups being further away than I would like but it's still true
I am genuinely baffled by how controversial this seems to be. All the author is saying is: if you write stuff publicly, think of who your audience is the elections are coming and it would be a...
I am genuinely baffled by how controversial this seems to be.
All the author is saying is:
if you write stuff publicly, think of who your audience is
the elections are coming and it would be a very good thing if the democrats won
the people who decide the elections tend to be the currently undecided ones
undecided people probably don't share your strong opinions, that's why they're undecided, so keep that in mind when posting
unless you know that the above isn't true for your audience, in that case just do whatever you think is best for the goal
I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, on the contrary in fact. MAGA online campaigns thrive on using real posts and opinions which, taken out of context but otherwise unedited, seem genuinely insane to your average undecided voter (or a right winger of course, but not necessarily, often even just a moderate center-leftist). This is why Libs of Tiktok was so successful, it did exactly this. Saying "maybe we shouldn't give them ammunition at least for a few months before the election" seems like a completely rational reaction.
I mean Libs of Tiktok also lies about and harasses people, intentionally targeting them for that harassment. It's weird to describe that as successful while saying "actually be nicer and more...
I mean Libs of Tiktok also lies about and harasses people, intentionally targeting them for that harassment. It's weird to describe that as successful while saying "actually be nicer and more normal" instead of "you should lie and harass people". It's weird how the strategy is always to appeal to the worst folks rather than pointing out how awful the worst folks are. (Trans people give them ammo by existing, the politician who pushes off the economy to handle "boys in girls sports" in a state where trans girls are already banned from school sports is not going to stop if the trans people are more wholesome. Trans girls are children. They'll use everything to hurt trans people no matter what they do.)
But I really don't think people are finding it that controversial here. I just think it's irrelevant unless you're an influencer, and that it's potentially playing into the whole "center pivot" plan that's IMO a fail. But it's mostly preachy and eyeroll worthy.
The most controversial is "don't be weird trans people" which a trans person gets more leeway on, IMO, but still absolutely targets vulnerable people as the "problem" rather than, again, the liars and the harassers. It's not worth getting upset about, because I don't post for followers and I don't see any reason to care about their opinion past that.
This is true, but it would have never worked that well if it didn't have a large number of social media takes that are genuinely hard to digest for even a moderate person, let alone hateful...
I mean Libs of Tiktok also lies about and harasses people, intentionally targeting them for that harassment.
This is true, but it would have never worked that well if it didn't have a large number of social media takes that are genuinely hard to digest for even a moderate person, let alone hateful people.
It's weird to describe that as successful while saying "actually be nicer and more normal" instead of "you should lie and harass people".
It's weird how the strategy is always to appeal to the worst folks rather than pointing out how awful the worst folks are
The point of the post is "think about how your posting affects the people who matter in elections". You're probably not going to convince the undecided moderates to join your side by being hateful. I also do not, at all, think that undecided moderates are awful people. Even people swayed by something like libs of tiktok don't have to be. I know several people aged 60+ who know absolutely nothing about culture wars, are generally kind and vote not ideally, but not terribly, and when they see selected ultraliberal culture war takes from social media, they're horrified.
absolutely targets vulnerable people as the "problem" rather than, again, the liars and the harassers
The point is that "what is right" and "what gets votes" often doesn't overlap and you don't get the luxury of fixing legislature to slightly improve the former unless your side wins elections.
But it's mostly preachy
Sure, I'll give you that, but at the same time I've seen similar takes in the past and the reception always seems to be hostile enough that I don't blame the author for writing it anyway. I live across the pond, so my point of view is necessarily limited, but it seems like a genuine issue, like there's a sizeable group of leftists who consistently refuse to accept that a large portion of the population just doesn't care about politics as much as they do, but they're not necessarily bad people and due to the two party system, there's no other option but to have many of them on your side if you want to win.
I don't agree that "undecided moderates" really exist as some sort of swayable voting block. I've seen far too many panels of "undecideds" full of "obviously decided" people and the data just...
I don't agree that "undecided moderates" really exist as some sort of swayable voting block. I've seen far too many panels of "undecideds" full of "obviously decided" people and the data just doesn't seem to support that they're really up in the air. I also don't agree that soft pivots to the center are successful or that influencers, vs direct personal connections and conversations, are particularly important. I think, in fact, we should rock the boat. And that this onus I on the party and candidates more than random people. So I disagree that this is the right tactic. Motivating non voters is likely way more effective.
But Libs of Tiktok targets every day people, not influencers, and targets perfectly normal people for simply being trans, their victims are victims, not deserving of it for being too weird. The idea that it's the victims fault for their harassment is like telling bullied kids to stop wearing their glasses instead of punishing the bullies. I don't think the trans people with enough followers for this to be relevant are doing "weird" things and I don't think that easentially teens on tumbler or outliers of any sort, should be considered liable for the election.
This is like saying "hey immigrants, don't do crime right now or you make your case worse" when a) those conversations are "internal" ones, b)people who do crime don't typically care about the societal and policy implications of that crime and c) if "crimes" included things like speaking Spanish and being brown.
Again, I hear "don't be weird" very different from them than I do from straight cis people, but I think it feeds into the same machine.
Tldr I don't support respectability politics as a general rule so this doesn't land for me, no matter how many times someone repeats the argument.
We seem to be talking over each other to some degree. I agree that Libs of Tiktok is evil. But that's beside the point. Libs of Tiktok sadly exists and my opinion on it is not going to change the...
We seem to be talking over each other to some degree. I agree that Libs of Tiktok is evil. But that's beside the point. Libs of Tiktok sadly exists and my opinion on it is not going to change the result of elections. For me the important question is: is there any evidence that the author is right and doing what they tell people to do can help democrats win? With the US and the geopolitical situation being what they are this unfortunately affects me more than in the past, so it is something I care about as well.
I spent some time looking it up, because surely there is data that would shed some light on who's more likely to decide elections: non-voters mobilised by being say more ideologically explicit, or undecided moderates swayed by being more controlled and moderate. I'm not sure if this is how you specifically would describe the conflict, but that's roughly what I've seen multiple times from others in various contexts, so that's what I went with. Of course reality is not binary like that, but some relevant data should exist.
The way I understand the data that I've seen, I think it supports what the author of the article says to some degree, though it is more complicated.
Eligible non-voters are a big group that can and does sway elections, but they're very heterogenous, which is evidenced for example by the fact that their preferred candidates (those who care) differ in each election. In 2020 their preference was 46:35 Biden:Trump, whereas in 2024 it was 40:44 Harris:Trump. source, pew research
The reasons for their non-voting however do not seem to be hiding some sizeable group of people for whom democrats are not left enough, the biggest reasons were not believing that their vote matters, disliking politics and not caring about the outcome: pew research again
There is some research on US moderates, and while there is some debate on whether "moderates" is the right description and their opinions often cannot be described on a single left-right axis, it does claim that there is a sizeable group of people who can be swayed to either side.
However, different research also claims that direct persuasion (campaigning, debates etc.) of undecided people is not particularly efficient, which would correspond with how the debates with undecided voters looked to you, and quite often the actually undecided people who can decide an election are deciding not just who to vote for but also whether to vote at all. So undecided/eligible non-voters overlap, and the way I understand it the ones in the overlap are likely more important.
There is some interesting research on the characteristics of moderates. Most commonly they tend to be younger, poorer and less educated, and so they also include the classic "working class" combination that has been leaving democrats over the years: people who are economically somewhat left, but socially conservative. The interesting part is that not just moderates/undecided but even many republican voters are actually economically somewhat left, if asked about specific economic policies and not about "redistribution" etc. in general.
Generally research on whether moderate candidates or more strongly partisan/more extreme candidates are more successful show that moderates tend to do better, with one big exception - voters tend to value perceived competence and experience a lot, which explains why for example Bernie is so popular. The problem with strongly ideological candidates is that they tend to mobilize more people in the opposite camp than their own. (for example here)
My hypothesis on the cause of the whole conflict is that one part of democrat voters sees democrats are sending moderate candidates and losing, so obviously being moderate doesn't work, whereas another part of democrat voters sees some of the strongly ideological discourse that happens online and concludes that their side is being too ideologically extreme which dissuades moderate voters. Some research shows that the latter is likely true, for both democrats and republicans, that there is a gap between what people assume is the average/most common opinion/ideological position vs what it really is, on both sides the reality is more moderate than people think. The evidence is not particularly robust here though. There is however pretty strong evidence that americans tend to significantly underestimate the diversity of opinions in each party - this does not directly support specifically the "online discourse makes people thing their party is much more radical than it really is" problem, but it does directly say that if a person bases their opinions on what they see online, it's highly likely that they do not realize their/the opposite party is in reality much more broad and diverse in its opinions.
I have not found any direct evidence for what the author of the article says, but I think it is mechanistically supported by the above. There doesn't seem to be a significant highly partisan group that would be dissuaded from voting by democrats being more moderate, if we omit the fact that candidate quality and experience can and often does matter more than ideology. There seems to be more evidence for the existence of a group of people who either are genuinely around the center or who are economically left but not socially left, and for the fact that the way you present your policies to them matters a lot. And there is some evidence for the theory that being more strongly ideological is likely not a good thing as it mobilizes strongly partisan people on both sides.
I don't really care about the same core question as you because I'm approaching it from a different angle. I appreciate everything you wrote and I read it. I just do not think this article is...
I don't really care about the same core question as you because I'm approaching it from a different angle. I appreciate everything you wrote and I read it. I just do not think this article is relevant, nor do I agree with its take as I feel it plays into a narrative I disagree with fundamentally. And I don't think influencers at this level particularly "influence" the election.
which would correspond with how the debates with undecided voters looked to you,
To be clear, I'm not talking about how debates "looked" or "felt" but how the news presents panels of undecided voters who explicitly are not undecided (and otherwise misrepresents their "every day people")
There was also an Atlantic piece that explained that the "undecided" voter is the statistically one who isn't sure if they'll vote at all.
And hell, maybe I'm wrong, but that's fine, as I said, they're not obligated to give a fuck what I say. But similarly I don't consider this piece to say anything new or particularly useful, especially if you're not someone with followers. Hence my "eyeroll" level response.
My point with Libs of Tiktok was that I don't give any credence to the "well the weirdos made their job easier so telling trans people to be less weird is good". It's blaming the victims IMO and in my experience bullies will pick on anyone for anything.
I don't think it's just about influencers, I think organic online content can be just as important. I don't view people just posting online or bloggers as influencers. I just used those words...
And I don't think influencers at this level particularly "influence" the election.
I don't think it's just about influencers, I think organic online content can be just as important. I don't view people just posting online or bloggers as influencers.
To be clear, I'm not talking about how debates "looked" or "felt"
I just used those words because I personally haven't seen any of the debates or read about them, but I was writing that from the assumption that you're correct about them, I wasn't trying to imply that it's just subjective.
Anyway.
I don't really care about the same core question as you because I'm approaching it from a different angle. I appreciate everything you wrote and I read it. I just do not think this article is relevant, nor do I agree with its take as I feel it plays into a narrative I disagree with fundamentally.
I am interested to know where the fundamental difference lies. I assume you care about election results, so is it that your line of "doing this just to increase the chance of winning elections is not worth it" is located elsewhere and this is over it? Do you think it's not going to help anyway? Or is it a different thing?
The person writing is talking to people who write for followers, not friends, not organically, so that's the framework I've been responding in, and a big reason why I don't see a point to this...
The person writing is talking to people who write for followers, not friends, not organically, so that's the framework I've been responding in, and a big reason why I don't see a point to this article, written by a small blog that doesn't really talk about politics often, whose audience is certainly not majority influencer.
I clarified what I meant about undecided voters because you didn't know the specifics. Not intended to be an accusation of you saying something.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we have to pivot away from human rights, civil rights, workers rights, and economic and social justice for the sake of making things more palatable. There are ways to discuss those issues that appeal to people of all backgrounds. Take Dr. El-Sayed in Michigan as an example.
And yet the attacks against him don't care, he's a Muslim, he's an extremist, someone he knows said something they don't like so he's a radical America-hating Muslim. Did they mention Muslim? He's like super Muslim. Which, if you didn't forget, means he's bad... And brown!
And I don't think random influencers, especially people with 6k followers on substack who don't write about politics, move that needle. Nor do I think the author has any particular expertise there and just repeats a narrative that has been ineffective. It's not "sell the leftist positions" it's "don't be too much" and personally I'm tired of being told not to be too much. I'm literally trying to stop capitulation to the fascist targeting of trans people. I (and others in this boat) am not the problem that needs correcting. The people giving into their narrative are.
I do not think that targeted minorities should have to make themselves small for acceptance. And if/when folks do for their own safety, or even as a calculated political move, that's not an external conversation.
I disagree with this tactic and this messaging because a) I think it's the wrong angle to take from jump, b) I think the blog is not relevant to anyone not an influencer, c) I think it, unintentionally, supports the transphobes, d) while candidates need better marketing they need the courage for that which will not come from constituents saying "don't rock the boat too much and upset the right" and e) it won't work.
In general I believe a principled stand is more effective than calculated blandness. Gay people were still "weird" during the push for marriage equality, the people doing the marketing highlighted what they wanted to, but we still had drag, and leather, and "weirdness". We can support, and advocate for, human rights without calling on the victims of harassment to stop being harassable. By making it clear it's not okay with us for them to capitulate.
I feel like I've reiterated the same points enough, so if we're still talking past each other we can leave it be. I don't agree with the authors' underlying assumptions and I also think the author was writing to influencers and I'm not that. I don't have or want followers. I believe in authenticity and courage as core ethical values. So it's unsurprising I cannot agree with the author given the assumptions the blog is written on are in conflict with how I view the world.
IMO it's just kinda pointless. I would model a group as large as "all prospective democratic voters" or "the entire leftwing of america" as being essentially mass chaos. It's not something you can...
IMO it's just kinda pointless. I would model a group as large as "all prospective democratic voters" or "the entire leftwing of america" as being essentially mass chaos. It's not something you can change the behavior of like that.
It would be the economic equivalent of a country being in a liquidity trap and writing blog posts called "Mindful spending" that encouraged people to spend money on more things. It ain't gonna do anything. Not because of anything wrong with anyone in the situation, that's just not how group dynamics of > 100 million people work.
Imo the research I talk about elsewhere in the thread supports that the article has some validity. One blog post is unlikely to change anything, but then again, it's just a blogpost, what else to...
Imo the research I talk about elsewhere in the thread supports that the article has some validity. One blog post is unlikely to change anything, but then again, it's just a blogpost, what else to use it for but to get your ideas out. Thinking like that would pretty much mean not posting anything anywhere.
Sometimes more people spread a similar opinion at a similar time (I bet that is the case with this one) and once you get over some critical mass, it definitely does have real influence on human behavior. The result isn't necessarily that those who do what the author preaches against change their opinions, it sometimes seem more like a different group of people gets a voice and becomes dominant in the public discourse for a while instead.
I'm not saying that the type of dialogue a party has doesn't change their voting habits, it's more that there's no evidence that this is something that can be controlled directly. Again, it would...
I'm not saying that the type of dialogue a party has doesn't change their voting habits, it's more that there's no evidence that this is something that can be controlled directly.
Again, it would be like if in economics, they tried to change inflationary expectations by telling people to spend less. Technically, it would work. Practically, no, you cannot change people's behaviors like that. Which is why economist don't do that. For these big, broad picture group behaviors, you use big carrots and big sticks. You make incentives and disincentives.
More concretely for this election, the way the actual candidates view and respond to things matters way more. There will always be some amount of crazy people in any group. You will never live in a world where Libs of Tiktok doesn't have any content. Never - it's impossible. It's not even a worthy goal to aspire to. If the candidates concretely and publicly disavow the more radical side of theirs community, that does way more than trying to write stern blogposts about said radical side.
I think that's a bad analogy, but maybe it's because we see the purpose of the article differently. I see the article as a part of online discourse that is on its own not going to help these...
Again, it would be like if in economics, they tried to change inflationary expectations by telling people to spend less.
I think that's a bad analogy, but maybe it's because we see the purpose of the article differently.
I see the article as a part of online discourse that is on its own not going to help these elections, but that may be a part of some larger shift which happens over time. And I think it's entirely possible that this change is going to happen, in fact I think it's slowly happening already, because in this case it's not necessary to change the spending habits of the majority of the population, it's just necessary to change what discourse is perceived as dominant despite coming from a small minority of people.
This has already happened in the past, it's how the described type of discourse became so strong - part of it was a chilling effect of throwing around accusations of racism, sexism, ableism and other forms of bigotry, but it pretty much happened one blogpost/twitter post/opinion article at a time. There's no reason why it couldn't happen again in a different direction, and the whole trend may realistically shift the outcome of elections in the future.
From that point of view it's a worthwhile article, but maybe I should have been more specific initially that this is how I see it, not as "the article is definitely going to change people's behavior and shift the outcome of this specific election".
You will never live in a world where Libs of Tiktok doesn't have any content. Never - it's impossible.
True, but in a situation where the discourse shared by Libs of Tiktok is viewed as fringe and not seen as somewhat dominant in online spaces and some strongly liberal media, its impact is going to be much smaller. The research I found confirms that there is a sizeable gap between what people believe are the mainstream opinions in each party and what the real average opinions are or what the diversity of opinions within the party is, so the online discourse does seem to have a real effect .
Honestly this might be the single most misguided piece of writing that I have ever seen. Let’s not advocate for ourselves on social media because… we’re no good at it? In fact we are so bad at it...
Honestly this might be the single most misguided piece of writing that I have ever seen. Let’s not advocate for ourselves on social media because… we’re no good at it? In fact we are so bad at it we might get people to do the opposite of what we want! Spooky!
Honestly it seems to me like the kind of psychotic thing that only the influencer type would be able to write: the author talks about “followers” instead of friends. They aren’t writing for you and me - people who are posting to their social media to communicate with people and communities they care about - they are writing for the influenzati, the people wrestling for attention and clout and brand deals and advertising dollars. At least that’s the impression that I get.
They're a small blog where there is no way a majority of their followers are influencers. This isn't for people who don't post for followers, no matter what their takes are. And I'd argue it's not...
They're a small blog where there is no way a majority of their followers are influencers.
This isn't for people who don't post for followers, no matter what their takes are. And I'd argue it's not great for those people either, but I already said that.
This is a rhetorical thing, not something that you can answer or that it makes sense for you to try to answer. They certainly could, but they're of course free to write whatever they want regardless of my opinion and without obligation to give a fuck what I say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have yet to ever login to bluesky, but let me give you this quick thought experiment. You are a politician and you are trying to gather popular sentiment on an issue quickly. You go online and...
I have yet to ever login to bluesky, but let me give you this quick thought experiment. You are a politician and you are trying to gather popular sentiment on an issue quickly. You go online and find 20 well reasoned takes for one side. On the other you find one or two well reasoned takes… and 20,000 poorly reasoned ones. Which one do you support?
You don’t even have to be a politician for this to be important. People take sides by repetition of ideas. This is often how right wing ideology spreads even when the ideas are harmful.
As a human being you need to advocate for yourself, even if you are bad at it! It’s the only way to get things done. Yes, you should try to get better at it. But you know how you get better at it? Trying.
It is important, for the preservation of American democracy and maybe the world, that the Democrats take the House and Senate in November.
(If you don’t agree with me about this claim, I wrote a blog post about it here.)
I recommend donating to high-value political candidates. But I want to bring to everyone’s attention an equally important thing they can do to improve Democrats’ chances in November: practice mindful posting.
“Mindful posting” is making sure, whenever you post about American electoral politics, that you post only content that is going to persuade your American followers to vote for a Democrat in November.
[...]
I’m not saying that you should never despair, rage, guilt-trip strangers, or argue in favor of radical and unappealing changes. I myself have been known to harbor the occasional violent revenge fantasy about Elon Musk. But the appropriate audience for these sentiments is a group chat with fifty people who already agree with you, a locked social media account, or if you must Bluesky in December.
It’s difficult to generalize about how to engage in mindful posting, because people’s followerships are different. If your followers are mostly evangelical Christians who vote straight-ticket Republican, you’re going to need different content than if your followers are mostly leftists who think Trump and Biden are indistinguishably evil. No advice I can give you will outperform thinking seriously about the undecided voters in your own audience.
[...]
My advice is to prioritize posting about health care, which has long been the Democrats’ best issue, as well as the economy. Israel/Palestine is one of Democrats’ best issues, but I’m not sure what the American public even understands Democrats’ position on Israel/Palestine to be, so maybe be cautious about that one. I would post about immigration carefully: brutal ICE raids on sympathetic targets yes, open borders and “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” no. I have no idea how to interpret the findings about AI but probably if you’re inclined to post a lot about AI your top concern isn’t whether Democrats win in November.
I would recommend being positive about the Democrats. The Democrats are unpopular, just not as unpopular as Trump—which is a fragile position going into the midterms. In particular, when posting about corruption in Washington, I’d recommend listing off positive things about Democrats and not just the endless litany of Trump authoritarianism and crimes.
For the love of God, please save being weird and offputting about the culture war until December. There will be plenty of time for trans people to freak the mundanes when we don’t have an aspiring dictator in the White House. For now, make like the 2010s gay rights movement: if you’re going to talk about trans rights, be wholesome and sympathetic.
Of course, these are generalizations, and you know your own audience best. If most of your followers are libertarian, posting a lot about open borders and very little about healthcare might be exactly the right move. Maybe posting freaky shit about trans people will make you seem more credible to your leftist followers when you tell them to vote.
When the stats say "voters care most about the economy", that might only be because there isnt an option on the poll to say "my coworker wouldnt shut up about Kamala Harris and it made me want to...
When the stats say "voters care most about the economy", that might only be because there isnt an option on the poll to say "my coworker wouldnt shut up about Kamala Harris and it made me want to burn the world to the ground".
For better or for worse I think raw emotional appeals matter. People just want the economy to be better, that doesnt imply they are going to believe you more if you remind them of that issue.
I mean, I still agree overall that there are lots of posts that probably are doing more harm than good for the poster's side. Because those people arent posting to try to help their side, they are just venting their emotions or communicating their honest opinions.
This is eyerolling, and not really relevant to people who don't have "followers" but also I don't agree that the pivot to the center is the right move and think the case of left wing values can be made better than they portray.
As they're a queer trans person, I hear their "don't be weird" in a much different tone than I do from a number of folks. But I think that unless their audience also leans that way they're missing the mark and potentially pandering to the transphobes with that line. Idk them, so I can't really say.
It just feels very unnecessary, and is just a post for other people who are also posting... Is that their audience? For a post about meeting your audience and persuading them, why make this public if it's for other substack authors? Maybe they're in a particularly unique space to reach folks due to their EA (more eyeroll) output. I doubt it though? They're a small blog.
Meh about the whole thing.
Yeah. I think the advice is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
A lot of people are swayed by popular opinion. If everyone is talking about how trump and republicans are evil dumbasses who start wars and ruin the economy, then low info voters will hear that and be swayed about it.
Haven't we been hearing for years how successful all the negative ads and demonizing of democrats has been for republicans? Why wouldn't the same voters respond the same way to demonizing of republicans.
This seems like a recommendation to keep posting the equivalent of negative ads? But with the audience in mind.
I mean unless you have "followers" rather than friends, i don't think it's ultimately relevant. It's not advice for you or me (unless you do have followers, I suppose, idk you) it's advice for someone "building an audience" on substack
I suspect a lot of people on this site are going to be very offended by this post. I don’t entirely blame them.
They are broadly correct, but I do think it’s a bit ironic that this post about how to talk to the right wing is like a case study on how not to talk to the left though.
Though I agree with the general sentiment that the culture war is a distraction, asking LGBT folks to give up their identity to vote for the political party that never does anything meaningful is such a good portrait of the average democrat.
Is your Internet profile really your identity? Do you lose your identity if you choose to keep some things off the Internet?
Most people here post under pseudonyms, which could be thought of as "losing your identity" if you wanted to feel bad about it, but there are good reasons for it, too.
Not who you replied to but yeah, who I am on the internet is actually who I am. I mask for every real life setting and I can just be my authentic self here.
I know I’m not the only one, and a trans blogger telling everyone to tone themselves down for the sake of the centrist voters who might vote to kill us all if we’re too weird is….. a hot take.
I'd agree that online is probably the place I am the most consistently fully authentic outside of my home. And that has a lot to do with friend groups being further away than I would like but it's still true
I am genuinely baffled by how controversial this seems to be.
All the author is saying is:
I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, on the contrary in fact. MAGA online campaigns thrive on using real posts and opinions which, taken out of context but otherwise unedited, seem genuinely insane to your average undecided voter (or a right winger of course, but not necessarily, often even just a moderate center-leftist). This is why Libs of Tiktok was so successful, it did exactly this. Saying "maybe we shouldn't give them ammunition at least for a few months before the election" seems like a completely rational reaction.
I mean Libs of Tiktok also lies about and harasses people, intentionally targeting them for that harassment. It's weird to describe that as successful while saying "actually be nicer and more normal" instead of "you should lie and harass people". It's weird how the strategy is always to appeal to the worst folks rather than pointing out how awful the worst folks are. (Trans people give them ammo by existing, the politician who pushes off the economy to handle "boys in girls sports" in a state where trans girls are already banned from school sports is not going to stop if the trans people are more wholesome. Trans girls are children. They'll use everything to hurt trans people no matter what they do.)
But I really don't think people are finding it that controversial here. I just think it's irrelevant unless you're an influencer, and that it's potentially playing into the whole "center pivot" plan that's IMO a fail. But it's mostly preachy and eyeroll worthy.
The most controversial is "don't be weird trans people" which a trans person gets more leeway on, IMO, but still absolutely targets vulnerable people as the "problem" rather than, again, the liars and the harassers. It's not worth getting upset about, because I don't post for followers and I don't see any reason to care about their opinion past that.
This is true, but it would have never worked that well if it didn't have a large number of social media takes that are genuinely hard to digest for even a moderate person, let alone hateful people.
The point of the post is "think about how your posting affects the people who matter in elections". You're probably not going to convince the undecided moderates to join your side by being hateful. I also do not, at all, think that undecided moderates are awful people. Even people swayed by something like libs of tiktok don't have to be. I know several people aged 60+ who know absolutely nothing about culture wars, are generally kind and vote not ideally, but not terribly, and when they see selected ultraliberal culture war takes from social media, they're horrified.
The point is that "what is right" and "what gets votes" often doesn't overlap and you don't get the luxury of fixing legislature to slightly improve the former unless your side wins elections.
Sure, I'll give you that, but at the same time I've seen similar takes in the past and the reception always seems to be hostile enough that I don't blame the author for writing it anyway. I live across the pond, so my point of view is necessarily limited, but it seems like a genuine issue, like there's a sizeable group of leftists who consistently refuse to accept that a large portion of the population just doesn't care about politics as much as they do, but they're not necessarily bad people and due to the two party system, there's no other option but to have many of them on your side if you want to win.
I don't agree that "undecided moderates" really exist as some sort of swayable voting block. I've seen far too many panels of "undecideds" full of "obviously decided" people and the data just doesn't seem to support that they're really up in the air. I also don't agree that soft pivots to the center are successful or that influencers, vs direct personal connections and conversations, are particularly important. I think, in fact, we should rock the boat. And that this onus I on the party and candidates more than random people. So I disagree that this is the right tactic. Motivating non voters is likely way more effective.
But Libs of Tiktok targets every day people, not influencers, and targets perfectly normal people for simply being trans, their victims are victims, not deserving of it for being too weird. The idea that it's the victims fault for their harassment is like telling bullied kids to stop wearing their glasses instead of punishing the bullies. I don't think the trans people with enough followers for this to be relevant are doing "weird" things and I don't think that easentially teens on tumbler or outliers of any sort, should be considered liable for the election.
This is like saying "hey immigrants, don't do crime right now or you make your case worse" when a) those conversations are "internal" ones, b)people who do crime don't typically care about the societal and policy implications of that crime and c) if "crimes" included things like speaking Spanish and being brown.
Again, I hear "don't be weird" very different from them than I do from straight cis people, but I think it feeds into the same machine.
Tldr I don't support respectability politics as a general rule so this doesn't land for me, no matter how many times someone repeats the argument.
We seem to be talking over each other to some degree. I agree that Libs of Tiktok is evil. But that's beside the point. Libs of Tiktok sadly exists and my opinion on it is not going to change the result of elections. For me the important question is: is there any evidence that the author is right and doing what they tell people to do can help democrats win? With the US and the geopolitical situation being what they are this unfortunately affects me more than in the past, so it is something I care about as well.
I spent some time looking it up, because surely there is data that would shed some light on who's more likely to decide elections: non-voters mobilised by being say more ideologically explicit, or undecided moderates swayed by being more controlled and moderate. I'm not sure if this is how you specifically would describe the conflict, but that's roughly what I've seen multiple times from others in various contexts, so that's what I went with. Of course reality is not binary like that, but some relevant data should exist.
The way I understand the data that I've seen, I think it supports what the author of the article says to some degree, though it is more complicated.
Eligible non-voters are a big group that can and does sway elections, but they're very heterogenous, which is evidenced for example by the fact that their preferred candidates (those who care) differ in each election. In 2020 their preference was 46:35 Biden:Trump, whereas in 2024 it was 40:44 Harris:Trump. source, pew research
The reasons for their non-voting however do not seem to be hiding some sizeable group of people for whom democrats are not left enough, the biggest reasons were not believing that their vote matters, disliking politics and not caring about the outcome: pew research again
There is some research on US moderates, and while there is some debate on whether "moderates" is the right description and their opinions often cannot be described on a single left-right axis, it does claim that there is a sizeable group of people who can be swayed to either side.
However, different research also claims that direct persuasion (campaigning, debates etc.) of undecided people is not particularly efficient, which would correspond with how the debates with undecided voters looked to you, and quite often the actually undecided people who can decide an election are deciding not just who to vote for but also whether to vote at all. So undecided/eligible non-voters overlap, and the way I understand it the ones in the overlap are likely more important.
There is some interesting research on the characteristics of moderates. Most commonly they tend to be younger, poorer and less educated, and so they also include the classic "working class" combination that has been leaving democrats over the years: people who are economically somewhat left, but socially conservative. The interesting part is that not just moderates/undecided but even many republican voters are actually economically somewhat left, if asked about specific economic policies and not about "redistribution" etc. in general.
Generally research on whether moderate candidates or more strongly partisan/more extreme candidates are more successful show that moderates tend to do better, with one big exception - voters tend to value perceived competence and experience a lot, which explains why for example Bernie is so popular. The problem with strongly ideological candidates is that they tend to mobilize more people in the opposite camp than their own. (for example here)
My hypothesis on the cause of the whole conflict is that one part of democrat voters sees democrats are sending moderate candidates and losing, so obviously being moderate doesn't work, whereas another part of democrat voters sees some of the strongly ideological discourse that happens online and concludes that their side is being too ideologically extreme which dissuades moderate voters. Some research shows that the latter is likely true, for both democrats and republicans, that there is a gap between what people assume is the average/most common opinion/ideological position vs what it really is, on both sides the reality is more moderate than people think. The evidence is not particularly robust here though. There is however pretty strong evidence that americans tend to significantly underestimate the diversity of opinions in each party - this does not directly support specifically the "online discourse makes people thing their party is much more radical than it really is" problem, but it does directly say that if a person bases their opinions on what they see online, it's highly likely that they do not realize their/the opposite party is in reality much more broad and diverse in its opinions.
I have not found any direct evidence for what the author of the article says, but I think it is mechanistically supported by the above. There doesn't seem to be a significant highly partisan group that would be dissuaded from voting by democrats being more moderate, if we omit the fact that candidate quality and experience can and often does matter more than ideology. There seems to be more evidence for the existence of a group of people who either are genuinely around the center or who are economically left but not socially left, and for the fact that the way you present your policies to them matters a lot. And there is some evidence for the theory that being more strongly ideological is likely not a good thing as it mobilizes strongly partisan people on both sides.
I don't really care about the same core question as you because I'm approaching it from a different angle. I appreciate everything you wrote and I read it. I just do not think this article is relevant, nor do I agree with its take as I feel it plays into a narrative I disagree with fundamentally. And I don't think influencers at this level particularly "influence" the election.
To be clear, I'm not talking about how debates "looked" or "felt" but how the news presents panels of undecided voters who explicitly are not undecided (and otherwise misrepresents their "every day people")
One example:
Why Does CNN Keep Featuring “Undecided” Voters Who Are Anything But? | The New Republic
There was also an Atlantic piece that explained that the "undecided" voter is the statistically one who isn't sure if they'll vote at all.
And hell, maybe I'm wrong, but that's fine, as I said, they're not obligated to give a fuck what I say. But similarly I don't consider this piece to say anything new or particularly useful, especially if you're not someone with followers. Hence my "eyeroll" level response.
My point with Libs of Tiktok was that I don't give any credence to the "well the weirdos made their job easier so telling trans people to be less weird is good". It's blaming the victims IMO and in my experience bullies will pick on anyone for anything.
I don't think it's just about influencers, I think organic online content can be just as important. I don't view people just posting online or bloggers as influencers.
I just used those words because I personally haven't seen any of the debates or read about them, but I was writing that from the assumption that you're correct about them, I wasn't trying to imply that it's just subjective.
Anyway.
I am interested to know where the fundamental difference lies. I assume you care about election results, so is it that your line of "doing this just to increase the chance of winning elections is not worth it" is located elsewhere and this is over it? Do you think it's not going to help anyway? Or is it a different thing?
The person writing is talking to people who write for followers, not friends, not organically, so that's the framework I've been responding in, and a big reason why I don't see a point to this article, written by a small blog that doesn't really talk about politics often, whose audience is certainly not majority influencer.
I clarified what I meant about undecided voters because you didn't know the specifics. Not intended to be an accusation of you saying something.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we have to pivot away from human rights, civil rights, workers rights, and economic and social justice for the sake of making things more palatable. There are ways to discuss those issues that appeal to people of all backgrounds. Take Dr. El-Sayed in Michigan as an example.
And yet the attacks against him don't care, he's a Muslim, he's an extremist, someone he knows said something they don't like so he's a radical America-hating Muslim. Did they mention Muslim? He's like super Muslim. Which, if you didn't forget, means he's bad... And brown!
And I don't think random influencers, especially people with 6k followers on substack who don't write about politics, move that needle. Nor do I think the author has any particular expertise there and just repeats a narrative that has been ineffective. It's not "sell the leftist positions" it's "don't be too much" and personally I'm tired of being told not to be too much. I'm literally trying to stop capitulation to the fascist targeting of trans people. I (and others in this boat) am not the problem that needs correcting. The people giving into their narrative are.
I do not think that targeted minorities should have to make themselves small for acceptance. And if/when folks do for their own safety, or even as a calculated political move, that's not an external conversation.
I disagree with this tactic and this messaging because a) I think it's the wrong angle to take from jump, b) I think the blog is not relevant to anyone not an influencer, c) I think it, unintentionally, supports the transphobes, d) while candidates need better marketing they need the courage for that which will not come from constituents saying "don't rock the boat too much and upset the right" and e) it won't work.
In general I believe a principled stand is more effective than calculated blandness. Gay people were still "weird" during the push for marriage equality, the people doing the marketing highlighted what they wanted to, but we still had drag, and leather, and "weirdness". We can support, and advocate for, human rights without calling on the victims of harassment to stop being harassable. By making it clear it's not okay with us for them to capitulate.
I feel like I've reiterated the same points enough, so if we're still talking past each other we can leave it be. I don't agree with the authors' underlying assumptions and I also think the author was writing to influencers and I'm not that. I don't have or want followers. I believe in authenticity and courage as core ethical values. So it's unsurprising I cannot agree with the author given the assumptions the blog is written on are in conflict with how I view the world.
I think it just fundamentally contradicts with some people's sensibilities about what politics are.
IMO it's just kinda pointless. I would model a group as large as "all prospective democratic voters" or "the entire leftwing of america" as being essentially mass chaos. It's not something you can change the behavior of like that.
It would be the economic equivalent of a country being in a liquidity trap and writing blog posts called "Mindful spending" that encouraged people to spend money on more things. It ain't gonna do anything. Not because of anything wrong with anyone in the situation, that's just not how group dynamics of > 100 million people work.
Imo the research I talk about elsewhere in the thread supports that the article has some validity. One blog post is unlikely to change anything, but then again, it's just a blogpost, what else to use it for but to get your ideas out. Thinking like that would pretty much mean not posting anything anywhere.
Sometimes more people spread a similar opinion at a similar time (I bet that is the case with this one) and once you get over some critical mass, it definitely does have real influence on human behavior. The result isn't necessarily that those who do what the author preaches against change their opinions, it sometimes seem more like a different group of people gets a voice and becomes dominant in the public discourse for a while instead.
I'm not saying that the type of dialogue a party has doesn't change their voting habits, it's more that there's no evidence that this is something that can be controlled directly.
Again, it would be like if in economics, they tried to change inflationary expectations by telling people to spend less. Technically, it would work. Practically, no, you cannot change people's behaviors like that. Which is why economist don't do that. For these big, broad picture group behaviors, you use big carrots and big sticks. You make incentives and disincentives.
More concretely for this election, the way the actual candidates view and respond to things matters way more. There will always be some amount of crazy people in any group. You will never live in a world where Libs of Tiktok doesn't have any content. Never - it's impossible. It's not even a worthy goal to aspire to. If the candidates concretely and publicly disavow the more radical side of theirs community, that does way more than trying to write stern blogposts about said radical side.
I think that's a bad analogy, but maybe it's because we see the purpose of the article differently.
I see the article as a part of online discourse that is on its own not going to help these elections, but that may be a part of some larger shift which happens over time. And I think it's entirely possible that this change is going to happen, in fact I think it's slowly happening already, because in this case it's not necessary to change the spending habits of the majority of the population, it's just necessary to change what discourse is perceived as dominant despite coming from a small minority of people.
This has already happened in the past, it's how the described type of discourse became so strong - part of it was a chilling effect of throwing around accusations of racism, sexism, ableism and other forms of bigotry, but it pretty much happened one blogpost/twitter post/opinion article at a time. There's no reason why it couldn't happen again in a different direction, and the whole trend may realistically shift the outcome of elections in the future.
From that point of view it's a worthwhile article, but maybe I should have been more specific initially that this is how I see it, not as "the article is definitely going to change people's behavior and shift the outcome of this specific election".
True, but in a situation where the discourse shared by Libs of Tiktok is viewed as fringe and not seen as somewhat dominant in online spaces and some strongly liberal media, its impact is going to be much smaller. The research I found confirms that there is a sizeable gap between what people believe are the mainstream opinions in each party and what the real average opinions are or what the diversity of opinions within the party is, so the online discourse does seem to have a real effect .
Honestly this might be the single most misguided piece of writing that I have ever seen. Let’s not advocate for ourselves on social media because… we’re no good at it? In fact we are so bad at it we might get people to do the opposite of what we want! Spooky!
Honestly it seems to me like the kind of psychotic thing that only the influencer type would be able to write: the author talks about “followers” instead of friends. They aren’t writing for you and me - people who are posting to their social media to communicate with people and communities they care about - they are writing for the influenzati, the people wrestling for attention and clout and brand deals and advertising dollars. At least that’s the impression that I get.
It's also weird because they don't really write about political issues directly themselves. So again, who is this for?
Ozy Brennan’s audience, whatever that is. Do you think maybe Rationalists and EA types post weird takes sometimes?
They're a small blog where there is no way a majority of their followers are influencers.
This isn't for people who don't post for followers, no matter what their takes are. And I'd argue it's not great for those people either, but I already said that.
This is a rhetorical thing, not something that you can answer or that it makes sense for you to try to answer. They certainly could, but they're of course free to write whatever they want regardless of my opinion and without obligation to give a fuck what I say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From reading Bluesky, I can say that yes, sadly, many people are no good at it. But maybe they would do better if they actually tried?
I have yet to ever login to bluesky, but let me give you this quick thought experiment. You are a politician and you are trying to gather popular sentiment on an issue quickly. You go online and find 20 well reasoned takes for one side. On the other you find one or two well reasoned takes… and 20,000 poorly reasoned ones. Which one do you support?
You don’t even have to be a politician for this to be important. People take sides by repetition of ideas. This is often how right wing ideology spreads even when the ideas are harmful.
As a human being you need to advocate for yourself, even if you are bad at it! It’s the only way to get things done. Yes, you should try to get better at it. But you know how you get better at it? Trying.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
When the stats say "voters care most about the economy", that might only be because there isnt an option on the poll to say "my coworker wouldnt shut up about Kamala Harris and it made me want to burn the world to the ground".
For better or for worse I think raw emotional appeals matter. People just want the economy to be better, that doesnt imply they are going to believe you more if you remind them of that issue.
I mean, I still agree overall that there are lots of posts that probably are doing more harm than good for the poster's side. Because those people arent posting to try to help their side, they are just venting their emotions or communicating their honest opinions.